New Delhi: India’s astronaut candidates, Indian Air Force Test pilots Group Captains Shubhanshu Shukla and Prashant Balakrishnan Nair, are set to begin their training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, this week.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced on Friday, August 2, that India’s Human Spaceflight Centre (HSFC) has signed a Spaceflight Agreement (SFA) with Axiom Space Inc, an American company recognized by NASA. Axiom, a private company, provides space travel services to paying customers. In this instance, Axiom will manage the spaceflight for an Indian astronaut on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which is the only current American rocket with a solid record of conducting multiple missions carrying astronauts.

WION had exclusively reported on July 13, 2024, that one of the two pilots would participate in a United States-led mission to the International Space Station (ISS) later in the year.

ISRO has designated Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla as India’s primary Gaganyatri (space traveller) for this mission, with Group Captain Prashant Balakrishnan Nair as the backup. One of them will be selected to travel to the ISS, a space laboratory orbiting 425 kilometres above Earth. The Multilateral Crew Operations Panel (MCOP) will decide which Indian candidate will join the ISS mission.

The selected astronaut, as part of the Axiom-4 mission, will conduct scientific research and technology demonstration experiments during his tenure aboard the ISS.